24 03 14 ashington Post – National Security

The White House began to notify Congress, under the War
Powers Act, of the new deployments as they began Sunday night. Dory and other
officials emphasized that the Ospreys will be used for troop transport and that
the rules of engagement for U.S. forces remain the same as for about 100 Special
Operations troops that Obama first sent to help find Kony in October
2011.
U.S. personnel are authorized to “provide information, advice and
assistance” to an African Union military task force tracking Kony and his
organization, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), across Uganda, the Central
African Republic, South Sudan and Congo. While combat-equipped, they are
prohibited from engaging LRA forces unless in self-defense.
The new War
Powers Act notification sets the approximate total for all U.S. forces in Uganda
at 300.
Kony, whose forces have spent years attacking central African
villages, mutilating civilians and stealing children, has been indicted by the
International Criminal Court. His organization is thought to have been decimated
in recent years through military action against it and defections.
LRA
attacks have decreased significantly and the number of people killed has
dropped more than 75 percent since 2010, said Grant Harris, a special assistant
to Obama and senior African affairs director for the National Security Council.
Three of the organization’s five commanders have been
“removed. . . from the battlefield” since May 2012, he said,
including “credible reporting” that second-in-command Okot Odhiambo was killed
late last year.
Force shifts its location
But Kony has
not been definitively sighted for some time. His force is now thought to number
no more than 250 fighters who shift position frequently within a wide area
across the target countries. Most recently, he has been thought to be somewhere
in the heavy jungle of the eastern Central African Republic, a country in the
midst of political upheaval and virtually without a government.
U.S. and A.U.
forces pursuing Kony operate out of bases in Uganda. Administration officials
who described the new deployments insisted they did not imply any weakening in
the Obama administration’s criticism of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni for
signing a new law imposing harsh penalties for “homosexual offenses.”
Obama
warned that the law, passed last month by the Ugandan parliament, was a “step
backward for all Ugandans,” and the administration said it would review
bilateral relations, including $400 million in annual U.S. aid to
Uganda.
“Ensuring justice and accountability for human rights violators like
the LRA and protecting” the rights of gay and transgendered persons “are not
mutually exclusive,” Harris said.
He said the administration has already
moved to shift funding away from partners “whose actions don’t reflect” U.S.
values, including $6.4 million that had been designated for the Interreligious
Council of Uganda, which has supported the legislation.
A planned survey of
key populations at risk for HIV, to be jointly conducted by the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention and Uganda University, has also been suspended
because “we think proceeding could cause danger to staff and respondents,”
Harris said.
He said that approximately $3 million in tourism and
biodiversity promotion programs has been transferred from the Ugandan government
to nongovernmental organizations. The Pentagon has also shifted regional
military conferences that were to be held in Uganda to other locations.
“We
are continuing to look at additional steps we might take,” Harris said, and
“continue to urge Uganda to repeal the law.”
Quick transport of
troops
Dory, at the Pentagon, declined to specify the exact number
of Ospreys that are being sent to Uganda or where they would be based inside the
country.
The Pentagon, the State Department and A.U. task force commanders
requested the aircraft last year to better enable the quick transport of troops
to areas where they have received intelligence about Kony.
Ospreys are
tilt-rotor aircraft capable of landing and lifting straight off the ground like
helicopters, but they can also fly and land as fixed-wing planes. They are
faster, and with their refueling capability, they can fly farther than the
small, fixed-wing contract aircraft being used in the mission.
Each can carry
about 24 troops, and the aircraft are equipped with .50-caliber machine guns for
self-defense. “They will make a significant difference in the ability to respond
to leads” about Kony’s whereabouts, many of them generated through growing
defections from Kony’s ranks, Dory said.
The deployment is also “an excellent
example of being able to share assets between different combatant commands,” she
said. Normally based in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, under the U.S. Central
Command — which oversees the Middle East — the Ospreys are temporarily being
transferred to the Africa Command. The deployment is temporary, officials said,
but they provided no estimate of how long they will remain in Uganda.
The LRA
poses no threat to the United States, but the administration sees assistance to
the A.U. mission as a useful way to build military and political partnerships
with African governments in a region where al-Qaeda and other terrorist
organizations are rapidly expanding, as well as to demonstrate adherence to
human rights principles.
Although critics accuse Obama of “weakness” in Syria
and the administration has been challenged by Russia’s military intervention in
Ukraine, the Uganda action is a relatively inexpensive way to show resolve in a
popular cause.
LRA atrocities publicized on the Internet sparked interest
among tens of thousands of young people in the United States, many of whom wrote
their members of Congress. In 2009, Congress passed legislation expressing
“support for increased, comprehensive U.S. efforts to help mitigate and
eliminate the threat posed by the LRA to civilians and regional
stability.”